Christine O’Donnell: what is truth?
Hieronymus Bosch, Christ Before Pilate, c. 1520. Jesus talked about the truth, but Pilate wouldn’t have it. Instead, he washed his hands of the affair, asked What is truth? and promptly subjugated truth to politics. We sigh: There is nothing new under the sun. Source: Wikimedia Commons Politics does not make a big splash at [...]
Hearing the whole concerto
Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943). Source: www.sunar.ru It is 1902. You are attending a piano concerto. Imagine it is Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, a personal favorite of ours here at psnt.net, performed by the man himself. But suppose that when the music starts, something sounds wrong; you can’t hear the low tones of [...]
William James considers the M word
Roy Behrens, William James (2001). Source: William James Cybrery. Used by permission of the artist THE FIRST THING TO KNOW: Mysticism is not a very nice word. In a recent post I said that you will not find that word mentioned very often at psnt.net. This is true, despite the fact that negative theology and [...]
The third way
Lisa Perrin, The Triumph of Reason, graphite on paper, 2009. Used by permission of the artist. Perrin writes on her site: “Yes, that is Charles Darwin riding a unicorn as a symbol of ‘The triumph of reason over fantasy and fallacy.’ You might also note the finches with various beak sizes, the slain dragon (the [...]
The truth is not out there
It’s stunningly beautiful, yes. And unimaginably large. But you won’t find what you’re really looking for in NGC 6188, a star-forming region 4000 light years away in the southern constellation Ara. The light of young hot stars reflects off the dust in the cloud out of which they were formed several million years ago, and [...]
Dalai Lama: Shambhala not in Canada
The Dalai Lama hosting a private audience at his residence in Dharamshala. This is not my photograph but shows almost exactly the view from my seat on Friday. Image source: www.dalailama.com Dad and I were the recipients of a great honor last Friday: we took part in a private audience with the Dalai Lama at [...]
When I heard the annoy’ng poet
William Blake, Newton, 1795. Source: Wikimedia Commons Let us now consider the words of Walt Whitman from his poem When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer, included in the 1900 edition of Leaves of Grass. When I heard the learn’d astronomer; When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me; When I was shown [...]
Step 1: Forget what you know
It is difficult to forget what you know. Yet often we are asked to let go of our handles, our assumptions, our frames of reference. All hope of finding new life is lost if we cling. Our presumptions about what we know, even our understanding, whether or not consciously held, can be stumbling blocks to [...]
You are a rarity. So is Mars
Ask any astronomer what the universe is made of, and the answer will be: Hydrogen.* Press the astronomer more and she will say, Oh yes, and some helium. How about all the other stuff? You know, the carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, and all those? There are only trace amounts of them. Also, smaller traces of neon, [...]
Questions, questions
I’m skeptical about the power of reason to effect change outside of the sciences. At some point in my life I ceased to fear arguments, no matter how well-reasoned. Maybe it began in eleventh grade, in Fr. McCaffrey’s philosophy class. He took us through all the well-worn arguments for the existence of God: the ontological, [...]
